‘Total Recall’ Trailer: Colin Farrell’s A Futuristic Super-Spy On the Run

This summer’s Total Recall marks Len Wiseman’s first time in the director’s chair on a feature-length production since 2007’s Live Free or Die Hard. Actress Kate Beckinsale’s husband has been keeping busy since then by helming the pilot for the rebooted Hawaii Five-0 TV series and co-writing the last two entries in the Underworld franchise, including this past January’s Awakening.

Wiseman and Beckinsale are back and working together again (professionally) on this summer’s Total Recall, which is part remake of director Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle and part re-interpretation of the Philip K. Dick short story that inspired the latter. As promised with last week’s trailer preview, today we can offer a full teaser trailer for Wiseman’s film.

Total Recall does away with the Mars aspect of its predecessor to offer a relatively more grounded representation of the year 2084, in which a seemingly ordinary factory worker named Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) decides to take a “virtual vacation” by undergoing a process where false memories of life as a secret agent are implanted into his mind. However, the line between fantasy and reality becomes blurred when the treatment reveals that Quaid actually is a covert agent, forcing him to go on the run in the hopes of taking down the supreme leader of the free world, Chancellor Cohaagen (Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Cranston). Or is all that simply what Quaid imagines to be the truth?…

A shortened version of the Total Recall teaser trailer premiered during today’s NBA game between the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat, which aired on ABC. The extended version of said promo is now online for viewing (no April Fools, we promise):

This trailer makes the Total Recall reboot/remake look a bit like Minority Report (also a Farrell-starring movie based on a Philip K. Dick short story) – had that flick been directed by Wiseman. Farrell as Quaid-the-spy very much bears the hallmarks of a stereotypical rogue agent in the post-Bourne Identity era of filmmaking. Similarly, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel – taking over the roles played by (respectively) Sharon Stone and Rachel Ticotin in Verhoeven’s film – also appear to posses some of that contemporary “super human” sort of fighting capability.

Overall it appears that Wiseman’s movie boasts a Fifth Element-inspired future setting (albeit, darker and less cartoony), along with improved set pieces, effects work, and action/stunts thats are more stylized (see: the sequence shot of Farrell taking down multiple police officers), but lack the R-Rated bloodiness found in Verhoeven’s Total Recall. Hence, it’s not entirely fair to call this updated Recall flick a “grittier” version of the story.

On a side note: does anyone else notice the numerous “lens flare” shots on display in this footage? It’s somewhat reminiscent of both the cinematography in Minority Report and J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, at different times. Moving on…

For a better look at the world and players of the new Total Recall, check out our trailer image gallery:

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Early consensus? Wiseman’s Total Recall looks like a potentially fun time at the movies. Our continued excitement for this flick also stems from the enduring hope that it will indeed tackle those heady philosophical issues about memory and reality which are inherent to its sci-fi storyline, while also sufficing as a visceral thrill ride. Wiseman and his Total Recall cast appear poised to hold up their end of the bargain, so here’s to hoping the screenplay – co-written by Mark Bomback (Unstoppable), James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) and Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium) – likewise delivers the goods.